Nothing Elegant
Gertrude Stein, 1874 - 1946

A charm a single charm is doubtful. If the red is rose and there is a gate surrounding it, if inside is let in and there places change then certainly something is upright. It is earnest.

A cool red rose and a pink cut pink, a collapse and a sold hole, a little less hot. - Red roses.

Splashes of crimson,

Charm. It's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have.

Her cheeks were bright with a soft vermilion of the pomegranate mingling with the whiteness of the lily.

A girl of sixteen had a complexion like a rose, and she put on rouge.

What do you see when you look at the inkblot? a monster a clown a jack-o-lantern a smile

Graced by those signs which truth delights to own, The timid blush, and mild submitted tone: Whate’er she says, though sense appear throughout, Displays the tender hue of female doubt; Deck’d with that charm, how lovely wit appears,

One beach-colored.
One brown.
One Loved.
One Loved a Little Less.

I had the view of a castle of romance inhabited by a rosy spirit, such a place as would somehow, for diversion of the young idea, take all colour out of story-books and fairy-tales. Was n't it just a story-book over which I had fallen a-doze and a-dream?

Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you.

Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

A SWEET disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness :
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction :
An erring lace which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher :
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbons to flow confusedly :
A winning wave (deserving note)
In the tempestuous petticoat :
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility :
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.

From the depths of his memory arose a tingling sadness, fragile and pure like morning dew, tinged with a rosy hue.